VHS : Puccini - Tosca / Sinopoli, Domingo, Behrens, The Metropolitan Opera
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starring: Hildegard Behrens, Plácido Domingo, Cornell MacNeil, James Courtney (III), Italo Tajodirected by: Kirk Browning
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786300215269
Format: Classical, Color, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 6300215261
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Release Date: January 01, 1998
Running Time: 127 minutes
Sales Rank: 8504
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1985
Related Items:- Puccini - Turandot / Franco Zeffirelli - Marton, Domingo, Mitchell, Plishka, Cuenod - James Levine, MET (1988)
- Puccini - La Boheme / Pavarotti, Scotto, Niska, Wixell, Plishka, Levine, Metropolitan Opera
- Verdi - Aida / Levine, Domingo, Millo, Metropolitan Opera
- Leoncavallo - I Pagliacci / Mascagni - Cavalleria Rusticana / Domingo, Stratas, Pons, Bruson, Obraztsova, Pretre
- Verdi - Rigoletto / Domingo, MacNeil, Cotrubas, Diaz, Levine, Metropolitan Opera
- see more
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
This is the best of Placido Domingo's several video performances as the painter Cavaradossi, lover of the prima donna Floria Tosca and enthusiast of revolutionary ideals in the repressive atmosphere of Napoleonic-era Rome. His colleagues, Cornell MacNeil and Hildegard Behrens, are both seasoned and highly capable performers who make the deadly confrontation between Tosca and the corrupt police chief Scarpia intense and believable. Guiseppe Sinopoli conducts with style and dramatic power. But in many ways the primary reason for wanting Tosca in a video rather than an audio recording is the staging by Franco Zeffirelli--effective for the few thousand who saw it in the opera house but even more effective on camera for the much larger television and home video audience. He shifts easily from the small-scale duets in Act I to the grandiose spectacle of the 'Te Deum' just before the curtain. His attention to small details helps build the tension in Act II to its violent climax, and in Act III he gives poignancy to the abrupt shift from hope to despair. The essence of Tosca is melodrama, and the singers, conductor, director, and audience all revel in it. --Joe McLellan
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Excellent
Excellent audio-video! Always a pleasure to see a Met/Zefarelli production. While the "movie" versions are very well done, I prefer to see the staged versions and the Met and Franco are tops! This a remarkably crisp image for a older production. The remastering is superb and the cast is world-class, of course.
Rating: - splendid!
Wonderful! All this talk of bad acting, poor voices, unintelligent casting is some reviewers' attempt to make themselves feel important. It's opera, and it's Puccini, so forgiving larger-than-life gestures, scenery, and emotions is not only easy to do, but necessary. All three leads embody their characters well, and in the opera house, it must have been magnificent. On film, it's a wonderful taste of what some of us never got the chance to see.
Rating: - Tosca! Rome! Youth!
Tosca was the first opera I ever saw, in 1964, from the last row of the topmost balcony of the Rome Opera. I went expecting not to be impressed, feeling a twenty-something surliness toward "bourgeois" art. Fortunately, it was a grand production, though I can't remember who sang or conducted, and I've loved opera ferociously ever since. I was living at the time in an apartment just outside the Campo dei Fiori, with a close-up view out my window of the great domed church of San Andrea, where the first ... Read More
Rating:  - This one is for us ladies.
If you are female and looking for a production of TOSCA, look no further. Placido Domingo is at his peak here. He looks marvellous, acts beautifully and his singing is beyond superlatives. I am not even going to try. Ladies, after watching this, I went to bed and dreamt of Mario Cavaradossi and how I would NEVER have put him in danger!
Before I get to the opera itself there are two marvellous extras on this DVD - THANK YOU, DEUTSCHE GRAMMAPHON. In one Franco Zeffirelli takes you on a tour ... Read More
Rating: - Magnificant!
Act I, the chapel scene as designed by Zeffirelli and executed by some very talented artist will never, in my opinion, be matched by other designers. It is truly a masterpiece, so good, in fact, that at the end of the act, the curtain closes, only to reopen for the most fabulous tableau ever! While the rest of the sets are grand, this Act I makes this DVD a valuable asset to any designer seeking inspiration, no matter the size of their working stage.
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